The present invention relates in general to cottonseed linters or linter gins, and particularly to a linter gin having an improved moting system for achieving higher rates of delinting.
A large variety of designs of linter gins have been proposed or produced for removing lint or linters from cottonseeds which have already been processed in conventional saw gins to remove the long, staple fibers from the seeds. The seed cotton which goes from the field to a cotton gin for ginning, which is commonly termed seed cotton, will produce, when subjected to conventional ginning, a bale of several hundred pounds of lint cotton, for example, a five hundred pound bale, while the remaining cottonseed will have a residue of lint thereon which when removed is known as "cotton linters".
It is common practice to remove the residue lint from the cottonseed which has been processed in a conventional saw gin by passing it through one or more linters, or designing a single linter, to produce for example a first cut lint and a second cut lint, although care must be taken that, in the second cut linter operation, one avoids cutting off some of the hull from the seed and sawing through certain of the seeds to the full extent possible.
The lint or linters removed from the seed in the linter gin by this operation is, of course, one of the salable products procued. The value or price of linters is determined by the percent of foreign matter and therefore it is desirable to remove the trash from the lint in the linter gin.
In the usual slow speed linter gin, "moting" or the removal of trash from the lint was dependent only upon centrifugal force and gravity, causing the heavier or more dense trash to fall out of the air stream created by the brush. It was found that with the higher volume of lint and foreign matter produced by linters incorporating the recent improvements in the feed mechanism and increase in speed of the saw and brush of the gin, the old type moting was not adequate to produce salable lint.
In the usual linter gin, the lint is removed from the seed by the bank of toothed saw blades passing between ribs, and the lint is doffed from the saw teeth by a revolving brush cylinder, where the lint and trash is suspended in the air stream created by the brush cylinder. While there will be some spreading or flarring of the air stream with the lint and trash suspended as it is doffed from the saw by the brush, it has been found by observation that the primary air current continues to follow the circumference of the brush through the moting chamber and into the discharge duct, resulting in very poor moting or removable of trash in the moting chamber.
An object of the present invention is the provision of the linter gin with an improved moting system which effects much higher rate of delinting with linter gins having current improvements in feeding mechanisms and increase in the speed of the saw and brush of the linter gin. Another object of the present invention is the provision of an improved moting system for linter gins, wherein an obstacle is placed close to the parameter of the brush in such a manner that the air current transporting the lint and the trash will be moved away from the brush to disrupt the primary air current following the circumference of the brush and more efficient remove motes and trash from the lint in the mote chamber.
Other objects, advantages and capabilities of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings illustrating a preferred embodiment of the invention.